As we celebrate another Yuletide season, it’s hard not to notice that Christmas in America simply doesn’t feel the same anymore. Although an overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, and those who don’t celebrate it overwhelmingly accept and respect our nation’s Christmas traditions, a certain shared public sentiment slowly has disappeared. The Christmas spirit, marked by a wonderful feeling of goodwill among men, is in danger of being lost in the ongoing war against religion.

Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.

This growing bias explains why many of our wonderful Christmas traditions have been lost. Christmas pageants and plays, including Handel’s Messiah, have been banned from schools and community halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares, and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns. Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile environment.” Even wholly non-religious decorations featuring Santa Claus, snowmen, and the like have been called into question as Christmas symbols that might cause discomfort. Earlier this month, firemen near Chicago reluctantly removed Christmas decorations from their firehouse after a complaint by some embittered busybody. Most noticeably, however, the once commonplace refrain of “Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy Holidays.” But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret, a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished and meaningful Christian celebration?

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people’s allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation’s Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

What if the good ole USA was founded by Leif Ericsson in the middle ages?
"The Founding Fathers brought us the Odin-given freedom to rape and pillage, and now these pansy liberals want to take that away?!"

Uh, since when are the Constitution and Declaration of Independence "replete with references to God?" The DoI mentions a generic creator, and the only parts of the Constitution that make any references to religion say to keep it the Hell away from the government.

Makes me think he's never even read them, which is downright scary for someone who is supposed to be running for President.

Stop right there. Yes, the phones are lighting up... It's the pagans ... the pagans are calling in and they want their holiday back! In fact ... yes, they're reminding us that crosses predate Christianity and like the ankh, were used as early sextants to pinpoint such events as THE WINTER SOLSTICE! As for the boy in the manger story, they would just like to add, "baaaaah!" Okay, next caller please ... Wotan? ... Tannenbaum? ....

tl;dr it all, but what I did take away from this was, "You're not doing Christmas right!!!!!!!!"

It's the same thing with all these idiots complaining about the use of the inclusive "Happy holidays" as opposed to the exclusive "Merry Christmas," that they're just pissed off because non-Christians like to celebrate the holiday season.

Christians are still free to erect Christmas displays on their own property, subject to reasonable zoning laws applying to all displays, Christmas or otherwise. They're still free to perform Christmas pageants and concerts at private venues. In NYC alone, there are dozens of performances of Handel's Messiah, as well as enormous Christmas trees in several locations, Christmas-themed window decorations and Santa Clauses in the stores and performances of religious music at quasi-public locations like the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What you can't do is put your religion's displays on everyone else's public property. Did the firemen who had to take down the Christmas decorations own the firehouse? I don't think so. You can decorate your own property. You can't decorate someone else's.

Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.

There is no reference to God in the Constitution, and there are two places where it is specifically excluded: in the First Amendment and in the rule that no religious test may be required for public office.

Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility.

Statistically, Christian fundamentalists have the highest rates of divorce and incarceration in the US. How does that indicate they've learned morality and civility?

I'm sure those that celebrated the birth of Mithras were appalled by the Christian bastardization of their sacred day. Same for those who celebrated the winter solstice. We may as well throw in the majority of all Christian celebrations since they are twists on celebrations of older beliefs likely meant to make the transition to Christianity easier.
As for the rest, I suggest you actually read the documents to which you refer. It's obvious that you have either never done this or only read the some strange "important American documents for fundies."

Instead of not celebrating one or the other religious or non-religious feast, why not celebrate the lot of them? Let's have both Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and Eid-al-Fitr.

As far as I know, the notion of a separation between church and state is mentioned in several of the writings of the Founding Fathers, and it's in some of the amendments to the constitution as well. The drafters of the Constitution were less religious than most people in the US government today.

We've been leftist and secular for decades in Sweden. We still feel a "wonderful feeling of goodwill" among humans (not just among men, but among women and children as well) around Christmas, or "Jul" as we call it. I'm not religious at all, but I still put up a nativity scene at Christmas. It IS a part of our cultural history, ya know. I also put a red hat on our Jack Skellington head.

Ronny, you do know that most of the stuff we put up at Christmas comes from 19th century Germany, don't you?

Religion is not just Christianity, stupid. If you want us atheists to respect Christianity, then we want you to respect Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Paganism. And yes, atheism as well. And all the other religions, of course.

"Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a 'hostile environment.'"

Uh...Joel Hodgson, as Joel Robinson, stuck on the Satellite of Love, had this to say about old-time "Office Christmas Parties". From the "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians" episode of that faboo TV cult classic, Mystery Science Theater 3000...:

"Well, uh um, yeah... long, uh, America's Past, you know... okay... (Reading) I'm talking about the '70s Christmas office parties. Back when a fully stocked bar was considered standard office furniture and office parties were like something out of a Playboy cartoon. Why the desks would be overflowing with every kind of hard liquor, why there were gallons of scotch, bourbon, vokda, gin, not to mention Galliano, Ameretto, Midori, rye, German crock pot gin, you name it, and sexism was blatent. Boy, oh boy, you'd find salesmen groping secretaries in the mail room, keys would be exchanged, and although this was Christmas, Jesus was nowhere to be seen." (thank you, 'Cut & Paste')

First, there are plenty on places where Christmas music is performed in public venues. Even here in liberal San Francisco there are Messiah sing-alongs in the symphony hall. The musical groups in the public high school I work in perform traditional seasonal music, both secular and sacred. Just because you can't have a church service in a public school doesn't mean you can't easily find Christmas music and pagentry almost anywhere you might live.

Many of the founding fathers were not themselves robust Christians. I think rather they envisioned a robustly secular, religiously tolerant America.

As for Churches doing what no government can do, that may be correct. They have been the balls and chains holding us back from scientific advancement and social justice for centuries. That governments do not teach YOUR SPECIFIC code of morals is a good thing. General codes of ethics and civility ARE taught in schools, but parents must be responsible for their take on the final details.

That Christmas will die as a casualty of your imagined war is as likely as a talking, burning bush or salvation from sins by the death of an innocent person.

It seems to me that most cases of Christmas decorations being removed have been done voluntarily by the Christians who put them up rather than allowing a competing belief to put up their own displays. That's the thing with religious tolerance; it's all or nothing.

BTW. One would hope that a self-proclaimed "constitutional libertarian" like old Dr. Paul would be aware of the fact that there's precisely one mention of a "creator" in the Declaration of Independence and "God" is not mentioned in either the DOI or the Constitution.

True dat. Batshit-fucking-loco would be putting it mildly, in my opinion. These people defy adjectives, and even "moderates" in comparison like Romney are complete politicians whose views change with the scenery like a fucking octopus.